We report here that rilmenidine, a drug known to act in the brain, which is currently used for the chronic treatment of hypertension, improves behavioural performances in a variety of domains in a transgenic animal model of HD.
There are, however, some reports of the song system and other neurobehavioural models [3], [13] [15] that do not easily fit this structure-function rule in which more "hardware" is correlated with improved behavioural performance.
Furthermore, Minocycline, a drug that inhibits MMP9 activity, has been shown to promote dendrite spine maturation and improve behavioural performance in Fmr1 KO mice [ 119].
We found that the rapamycin analogue CCI-779, which induces autophagy by inhibiting the protein kinase mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), improved behavioural performance and decreased aggregate formation in a mouse model of HD (14) and in a mouse model of another polyglutamine disease, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (15).
For instance, research in healthy adults and clinical populations has shown that cognitive training paired with brain-targeted intervention can maximize neuroplasticity and thereby significantly improve behavioural performance (for reviews see Cohen Kadosh, 2013; Holland and Crinion, 2012; Jacobson et al., 2012b), including long-lasting effects (Cohen Kadosh et al., 2010; Reis et al., 2009).
Future research would profitably be extended to test transfer to a greater range of behavioural goals and tasks, and further examine the underlying mechanism(s) by which generating positive imagery improve later behavioural performance.
The interpretation of this result is that the BOLD signal elicited by sound only stimuli reduces in power as behavioural performance improves.
At the second measurement time, cortical activation should have been the same for the healthy controls while arousal may have decreased for some participants as the situation was more familiar, leading to a reduction in signal intensity and negative correlations with behavioural performance due to improved cognitive function (with reduced arousal).
One was excluded on the basis of their behavioural performance, with performance being no better than chance in some conditions.
2) How is the behavioural performance of tadpoles and froglets related to their morphology?
